Eight Hundred Slightly Poisoned Word Games

A DIY self-experiment: Scott played WordTwist ~800 times under varying CO2 (445-3208 ppm) to test the 2012 Berkeley claim that indoor CO2 dramatically impairs cognition. Found zero correlation (r=0.001, p=0.97), robust to temperature and a house-move exogenous shock. A clean negative data point against a contested (submarines-work-fine-suspicious) finding.

Quality 62 · Strong. Strong (lower): engaging, self-aware n=1 empiricism with multiple validity checks and a clear negative result on a shaky claim; bounded by being a single-task self-experiment.

Claude’s paradigm shift 42 · Moderate. Moderate-Notable: a rare DIY replication attempt on a contested effect.

Real-world impact 1 · Negligible. Within-blog self-experiment; negligible material reach. =1.